Still Tops in the Hate Parade?
By Michael Kaufman
A report issued last month by the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) says that Jews were the top targets for hate crimes in the state last year, followed by blacks, gay men, and Hispanics. The report analyzed crime data submitted by police agencies in all of the state’s 62 counties.
Of 596 cases statewide identified as hate crimes, Jews were targets of 36%, blacks 25%, gay men 11%, and Hispanics 4%. Like many other Jews, my first reaction to the news was, “So what else is new?” The virulent anti-Semitism that sparks hate crimes against Jewish people has been around for millennia. I remember reading a magazine article a few years by a Holocaust survivor from an area in Eastern Europe where the entire Jewish population had been eradicated. Upon returning to the home town of his youth he was shocked to see anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled on walls, and to hear anti-Semitic slurs uttered by local citizens. The hatred had persisted long after there were any Jews there to hate.
Anti-Semitism also tends to spike in times of economic hardship, as was the case in pre-Nazi Germany. The old stereotypes about Jews and money die hard, especially when names like “Goldman-Sachs” appear in the news in connection with the Wall Street meltdown and the dubious bailout that followed at the expense of the American taxpayers. It doesn’t matter that most of the big banks in the U.S. and worldwide are not headed by Jews. No one hears names like J.P. Morgan, Chase, or Barclay, and thinks, “Those damn WASPS!”
Nevertheless, on reflection I think the state report is flawed. I don’t doubt that we Jews account for more than a fair share of the hate crimes committed in New York State and, for that matter, across the United States. But I question the statistical findings when the only data used in the analysis were provided by police sources. There is a tendency on the part of police officials, who are most often white, to dismiss the suggestion that a crime committed against a nonwhite person is a hate crime. Sometimes they don’t even consider it a crime at all. This is especially true when the police themselves are the perpetrators. Remember: the four white cops who put 41 rounds into the defenseless Amidou Diallo in February 1999 were simply doing their duty.
And what are we to make of that 4% figure for Hispanics? Assaults on undocumented immigrants awaiting work as day laborers were commonplace in some communities in the state last year. Were they reported as hate crimes? Were they even reported at all or were the victims too afraid of deportation or indefinite incarceration at some hellhole of a detention facility to file charges or testify? You want to see hate crimes? Take a look at the cruel treatment afforded the detainees—women and men, many with young children—who came here in search of a better life only to be demonized as “illegal aliens.”
Elie Wiesel, the writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Holocaust survivor, said it all: “You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is ‘illegal,’” he declared “That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong. But illegal? How can a human being be illegal?” Not long after he made this statement he was assaulted and dragged out of a hotel elevator in San Francisco. His assailant, Eric Hunt, a 23-year-old anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, is from nearby Sussex County, NJ. He was eventually convicted of a hate-crime felony and two misdemeanor charges of battery and elder abuse.
Of the 564 incidents reported as hate crimes by local police officials in New York State last year, only 10 resulted in convictions for hate crimes. (Fifty-four resulted in convictions on other charges.) Janine Kava, a spokesperson for the DCJS, cautioned against drawing any sweeping conclusions about the conviction statistics. “It would really be inappropriate to speculate on that,” she said, explaining that prosecution is a local function. “Each case could have had its own fact pattern, its own reasons for the disposition.” One need not speculate to know there is entirely too much hate in our midst regardless of who tops the list of victims of hate crimes.
Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.
Tags: Michael Kaufman
September 10th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Last week’s post drew some interesting email observations besides the comment left at the Zest site. MIKHAIL HOROWITZ suggested that gangsters like Abe Reles were GOOD for the Jews because they showed that Jewish gangsters could be just as tough as their Irish and Italian counterparts. He pointed out that Meyer Lansky and his cronies broke up pro-Nazi German-American Bund rallies in Yorkville. JOAN LIDESTRI recalled that her late mother rated “everything” on whether it was good or bad for the Jews. “She read the Obituary column in the Bergen Record first thing every day, checking to see if any Jews had died…All this from a woman who attended synagogue maybe a half dozen times in her life, and only for weddings and bar mitzvahs at that. Thanks for the memories.” MICHAEL MELASKY, who not only attends synagogue but is a pillar among the leadership of Temple Beth Shalom in Florida, expressed his admiration for Sandy Koufax thus: “There are only so few of us who would watch the World Series from a hotel room rather than play in it; I think Sandy was more pious than I could ever be..” Maybe so, but I doubt he can do a Torah lift like Melasky.